The walkout of the entire Opposition the moment Pranab Mukherjee announced the petrol and diesel hike in his Budget speech is, undoubtedly, the single most important political development in many years. Is it back to the good old days of anti-Congress-ism as the principal political sentiment? That is the question that is most dominant in Delhi’s political discourse since Friday, 26th February. The significance of the event cannot be underestimated. All through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, every political party took birth with an ideological identity that was distinctly opposed to that of the Congress. It was only around the time of the ‘Hindu revival’ of the BJP and the peaking of the movement with the demolition of the Babri mosque that the anti-Congress-ism gave way to anti-BJP-ism. For the last decade-and-a-half, anti-BJP-ism has been the dominant political sentiment. During this period, anti-Congress-ism existed at the Centre only as a figment of imagination of the Left parties which repeatedly tried and failed—the last time as late as in 2009—to come up with a third front as a distinct alternative to the Congress and the BJP. Thus, it was interesting to see Laloo Yadav and Sharad Yadav, who are in a permanent cat-fight in Bihar, and Brinda Karat and Sushma Swaraj, who love each other as much Osama loves Obama, walking out in tandem and shouting the same slogans to the TV cameras. So is the Congress worried? Hardly. Because implicit in the coming together of the Opposition is the admission that the Congress is once again emerging as THE party to beat. That’s exactly what Rahul Gandhi has been working on for the past five years. You just have to look at the BJP’s rise, rule and fall in the past 15 years to know that if you are not hated enough by your political opponents, you don’t count in the power equation. The hate-pill is just what the doctor ordered for the Congress.

Bye-bye Mr Advani
On the face of it, the walkout by the Opposition might seem like it was a spontaneous reaction to the petrol price hike. That belief comes from the fact that the Budget speech is top secret and the Opposition could not have known about the hike until Pranabda read it out. But the manner in which they walked out instantly without having to be prompted by one another suggests that some sort of Opposition ganging-up happened even before the session began. There must have been some agreement on a combined walk-out on the issue of price rise and the petrol hike was the trigger they were looking for. But the question that is being asked most in Delhi is: Why has the rest of the Opposition found it expedient to be seen on the same side as the BJP? The BJP has been out of power for six years now; but most parties (other than its few electoral allies) have steadfastly treated it as the pariah. So what has changed? The simple answer is the dethroning of LK Advani. With the former deputy prime minister and political architect of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement no longer at the centre of the BJP affairs, the Opposition is perhaps a little less wary of associating with the Party from the outside. As leader of the Opposition, Mr Advani was perhaps a bit delusional about BJP’s power, position, relevance and influence and would not easily join hands with the rest. For the rest of the Opposition, too, it is easier not to have to associate with the face of the hardcore Hindutva. So this is definitely a tectonic shift. In the next few years, we could see anti-Congress-ism becoming the theme of national politics much like in the decades preceding the 1990s. How far it will go is, of course, tough to say at this point. But we can say this with certainty: this is the last nail in the coffin of the Advani era within the BJP.

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